flowering dogwood

American  

noun

1. a North American dogwood tree, Cornus florida, having small greenish flowers in the spring, surrounded by white or pink bracts that resemble petals: the state flower and the state tree of Virginia.

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Etymology

Origin of flowering dogwood

First recorded in 1835–45

Example Sentences

For any spring-flowering branch, you can cut it just as it is about to flower, and over the next month or so, that includes star and saucer magnolias, flowering dogwood, redbud and crab apples.

From Washington Post • Mar. 2, 2021

In Bridgeport, Conn., people still stroll the pathways around the pond at Mountain Grove Cemetery to admire the flowering dogwood trees in the spring or the brilliant foliage in the fall.

From New York Times • Jun. 6, 2016

If you did this in winter to, say, a flowering dogwood, you would lose the spring blossoms.

From Washington Post • Mar. 17, 2015

With a professional eye he inspected the plot of real grass, the border of daffodils, the flowering dogwood blossoms, the background of evergreens and the three tombstones that they set off.

From Time Magazine Archive

By the roadside, on a little knoll set round with flowering dogwood, sat General Lee on grey Traveller.

From The Long Roll by Johnston, Mary